I keep making variety of paratha/ flatbreads at home trying to incorporate veggies in various forms into them. One can find quite a few variations of parathas here. I prefer to make the parathas of high nutritive value, devoid of maida/ all purpose flour and using minimal oil.

A few days back while surfing the channels I landed on a Marathi channel where a famous chef whom I actually admire for his skills, was making a chequered paratha but I found the process quite messy and tedious. Also, the paratha didn’t have the neat chequers but I loved the idea and hence, it kept surfacing in my thoughts.. I wanted to experiment with my version of flavours, also keeping the nutritive value high and most importantly, wanted to make a neat looking chequered flatbread.

Finally a few days back, I got the idea into execution and during the trials developed a simpler way of making chequered paratha and one more variant too, the marbled. I served the kid an assortment of parathas in his lunch box and he offered them to his teacher. The kid was overwhelmed with joy to hear all praises for his mom from his teacher. She told him that his mom is a great cook and was all praises for the taste and creativity.

The marbled paratha is quick to make but the chequered needs loads of patience and diligence. Initially one needs to show a lot of persistence to do it neatly, with practice it’s easier to make. Fortunately, I surprised myself with some patience as well as persistence and unlike the chef’s paratha, mine was neat and looked beautiful!!

Method For Coloured Dough

Wash the Spinach, Coriander, green chillies. Chop them roughly and grind them to a fine paste* using minimum water. In a food processor tip in the paste, salt to taste and first add about a cup of flour. Give quick pulses to mix the flour with the paste. If the dough appears to be sticky, add more wheat flour and run on the slowest speed of the processor. Once the mix starts forming a shape, put a few drops of oil. Remove and cover the dough. Rest it for about 15 minutes.

Make the red dough in the similar fashion as the green one.

Method For Making Chequered Flatbread & Marbled Flatbread

Break equal sized red and green dough and smoothen them to make balls.

Roll a green and a red ball separately using wheat flour to a not so thin* flatbread.

Place the two coloured flatbreads over each other and cut around the edges to give a square shape. Remove the cut edges and place them over each other. These are to be used later...

Cut equidistant strips of the rectangular flatbreads.

Remove the strips of top colour.

Put one horizontal strip of green colour on the vertical strips of pink colour. Place one end of the horizontal strip under the first vertical strip and apply water on it so that they stick. Now push the horizontal strip under the third and fifth vertical strip and stick using water. The first row gets completed this way.

For the second row, stick the horizontal green strip on the first pink strip hugging the top row so that there are no gaps. Now over turn the 2nd, 4th and 6th pink strip (alternate strips). Apply water on the green strip and then turn the pink strips straight over it, leaving no gaps. This way second row is completed.

Do the third row same as the first row. (alternate rows are done in similar fashion)

Do the fourth row same as the second row.

Complete the entire flatbread in the similar fashion. Normally all the horizontal strips do not get used. If the edges are uneven, shape them.

Lift the flatbread gently and transfer to the griddle. Roast it on the hot griddle on both the sides using some oil, till it’s cooked and light brown spots are seen.

“This recipe of chequered flatbread is been created for The Urban Spice and KitchenAid India Diwali Contest”

Method For Marbled Flat Bread

Take the cut edges from the chequered flatbread. Place them over each other.

Turn them from one end to another to form a spiral, close the end. Using the palm press it lightly on the top to smoothen.

Using the wheat flour roll it out to 5”-6” diameter and roast it on a griddle using oil.

Or

Break small pieces of both the colour dough and combine them to make one ball. Roll it out. This also makes a marbled flatbread. The first method is more useful as it gives better textured marbled flatbread and also the cut portions do not go waste.

Serve the hot flatbread with curds, butter and chutney/pickle.

*Note:

1. Spinach has natural salts so add a little less salt while using spinach.
2. It is important to make a fine paste as it has to be mixed with the dough which gets rolled later on. If the paste is lumpy then the rolled flatbread will tear.
3. Making a thick flatbread ensures that while lifting and sticking the flatbread doesn’t tear.
Sending the flatbread to my event ‘ONLY’ Food For Growing Children guest hosted by Shruti.